In May 2024 I took over as Chief Creative Officer at argodesign. I learned from the best, working closely with founder Mark Rolston, first during my time as a Creative Director at frog, then for the past six years as a Head of Creative at argo. Mark has handed over a team, culture, and company that is like no other place I’ve worked in my nearly 30-year career in design.
The inheritance is not a tidy package, however. It is a challenging time for design and for us all, whether at agencies or within product teams. The truth is that agencies and design teams are constantly changing, reacting to the needs of customers, the business, and the demands of the market. argo’s relationships with its customers prove this out; many are long and varied and continually evolve to meet their needs. Through all the changes in technology, there has been a constant—the role of design in leading and defining the way forward. Design and technology are more enmeshed than ever, as technical implementation of visionary strategies provide the real proof points and value that are delivered to our clients.
As attitudes and approaches to design change, argo adjusts as well, positioning our service offerings to meet the moment. We are known for delivering deep, complex enterprise product strategies and design systems imbued with technology. That will not change. We are also placing emphasis on a few key areas that we know are top-of-mind for businesses these days:
Superpowers for your teams and customers - new tools and technologies are critical to augmenting the workforce of today and tomorrow. We deliver digital solutions that enable employees to do their work with greater efficiency and effectiveness, resulting in better experiences for their customers.
Designing bridges to new technologies - we specialize in bridging the gap between humanity and complex technology, defining the yet-to-be-defined. We turn leading-edge technologies into applied experiences by establishing new behavioral patterns, validating them, and launching them into the market.
Design systems for longevity - we set our clients up for long-term success by infusing user experience strategy into digital transformation programs, ensuring impactful, lasting outcomes for product teams, partner ecosystems, and customers.
And you can’t talk about the future without mentioning AI. At argo, we are far beyond pontification—we’ve been working with AI clients since our beginnings in 2014. As this current bubble subsides, we’re seeing a landscape of bolted-on AI features in enterprise and consumer applications, resulting in inelegant and frankly not-asked-for executions.
This powerful wave of technology has promise, but there’s a significant gap in providing context for us as humans to understand the why and what for. The next wave to ride, and our purpose as designers, strategists, and technologists, is to work with our customers to bring thoughtful, user-centered design back to the fore. In the long run, we believe your AI technology should be useful for your customers, beautiful in execution, and as visible as needed. We can help you get there.
argo has a rich heritage of thinkers and makers, and we look forward, with you, to continuing to help improve the human condition through collaborative, beautiful design. Feel free to reach out to me directly to talk about where argo can help your company.